Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

ibook_steve · May 13, 2014, 03:14 PM

I normally don't have issues like this, but I'm a bit stumped at this point.

Last week, I tried booting into a BC partition that I hadn't in a couple of months. I got a "no bootable device" error. I have no idea why. I have a Win7 Ultimate DVD, so I tried running repair from that from my external optical drive. The repair option would not run (still don't know why; said something about the wrong version of the disk).

I didn't have a lot of stuff on the partition, so I used BC Assistant to restore back to one Mac OS X partition after backing up what I needed.

My problem now is getting Windows reinstalled. BC Assistant in Mavericks is insistent that the Apple drivers be included with the installation ISO. Previously, I thought you install Windows and then could run the BC drivers separately after booting into Windows. Now, I can't even partition my drive without having a complete install drive that includes an ISO and the BC drivers. Has that changed recently?

And all I have is a DVD, not an ISO. I guess I can make an ISO of the Win7 DVD using Disk Utility and then point BC Assistant to that to include the Apple drivers. Will that work?

This seems much more complex than it did when I did it last year. I can't imagine how a "normal" (aka a non-techie person) would be able to do this.

Steve

P · May 13, 2014, 04:01 PM

Originally Posted by ibook_steve

I normally don't have issues like this, but I'm a bit stumped at this point.

Last week, I tried booting into a BC partition that I hadn't in a couple of months. I got a "no bootable device" error. I have no idea why. I have a Win7 Ultimate DVD, so I tried running repair from that from my external optical drive. The repair option would not run (still don't know why; said something about the wrong version of the disk).

I didn't have a lot of stuff on the partition, so I used BC Assistant to restore back to one Mac OS X partition after backing up what I needed.

My problem now is getting Windows reinstalled. BC Assistant in Mavericks is insistent that the Apple drivers be included with the installation ISO. Previously, I thought you install Windows and then could run the BC drivers separately after booting into Windows. Now, I can't even partition my drive without having a complete install drive that includes an ISO and the BC drivers. Has that changed recently?

And all I have is a DVD, not an ISO. I guess I can make an ISO of the Win7 DVD using Disk Utility and then point BC Assistant to that to include the Apple drivers. Will that work?

This seems much more complex than it did when I did it last year. I can't imagine how a "normal" (aka a non-techie person) would be able to do this.

Steve

You must have the driver downloaded in advance if it is needed to boot Windows the first time.

Each version of Windows ships with support for a limited set of boot up configurations - essentially, ways that it can access the boot partition. That list is long, but not endless, and if you need to install it on a configuration not explicitly supported, you have to use a special trick at installation to get a driver into the OS early enough to boot. Incidentally, if you don't this, you can still install it, but the first boot will fail with an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error. Which is what it sounds like you got.

So my question is: has the hardware changed in any significant way? New firmware, maybe? Because it is a strange coincidence otherwise.

ibook_steve · May 13, 2014, 04:10 PM

No, nothing has changed. I created the BC partition when I first got the machine in early December 2013. I don't recall having these difficulties.

Steve

P · May 14, 2014, 03:29 AM

What model Mac do you have?

donaldkepler · May 14, 2014, 06:07 AM

Apple drops the support for Windows 7 in New MacPro.

If you are having MacPro model, then the 2013 Mac Pro is the first Mac that does not include support for Windows 7 with Boot Camp 5.

ibook_steve · May 14, 2014, 04:13 PM

Late 2013 rMBP.

Steve

P · May 15, 2014, 05:40 AM

So storage is PCIe, not SATA, which means that you would have to include a driver to get Win 7 to boot. It's just curious that it ever worked to boot before.

jackbenner · May 16, 2014, 02:41 PM

I've been on this path. You need to download Boot Camp 4 as it lets you do things the old way. This change in Boot Camp 5 is not an improvement as I see it. I also recommend making a backup of your windows partition with WinClone. It use to be free but now is a paid application. Works very nicely to restore your windows partition when bad things happen.

ibook_steve · May 21, 2014, 12:15 PM

Well, I ended up getting a 16 GB flash drive and using an online ISO of the disk to get this to work. Yeah, I remember in version 4 you could just install Windows and then some time later run the Apple driver installer in Windows, but BC 5 does not allow this. You have to have everything ready to go in one shot (aka one USB drive).

Steve

ghporter · May 23, 2014, 09:18 AM

At least the combination of Mac and Windows lets you use a USB drive. Windows used to break an installation at the first reboot if the source wasn't an "installed" drive.

P · May 23, 2014, 09:44 AM

You can install Windows FROM a USB drive, but generally not TO a USB drive. Win 8 may have changed that - I never tried installing it - but Win 7 won't install to USB.

My iMac also won't boot Windows from USB. It will OS X from USB, but the BIOS emulation apparently does not include USB support.

ghporter · May 23, 2014, 01:05 PM

With Windows through XPSP2, the installer would force the USB system to re-enumerate all USB ports and devices at reboot, thus losing any connection to a USB device. They must have changed that with 7.